John Reilly: Preserving World War II memories

Friday

May 27, 2011 at 12:01 AMMay 27, 2011 at 10:58 AM

As the veterans of World War II fade away, a desperate effort is on to preserve their personal accounts. Kansas author Ann Parr She enlisted the teenagers in her community to transcribe the accounts of veterans and initiated a project to record our history and turned it into a teaching opportunity for a group of middle school children.

John Reilly

Memorial Day, originally established as Decoration Day in 1866, was created as a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s service.

During the first celebration of Decoration Day, Brig. Gen. and future President James Garfield stood before 5,000 gathered at Arlington National Cemetery and, in perhaps his finest hour, spoke these words:

"If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of 15,000 men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem the music of which can never be sung. For love of country, they accepted death, and made immortal their patriotism and virtue.”

When his speech ended, flowers were scattered on the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers.

Over time, Memorial Day has evolved into a time to not only remember the dead, but to recognize all those who serve. So today, in between our baseball games and barbecues, Memorial Day offers us a face-to-face opportunity to say thanks to the veterans who risked their lives to pave the roads of freedom that we walk today.

But here’s the thing. We’re running out of time. According to estimates from the Department of Veterans Affairs, we are losing our World War II veterans at the rate of almost 800 a day. By the year 2020 they will all be gone. And so, too, will die the firsthand accounts of storming the beaches and parachuting behind enemy lines and liberating countries and rebuilding America. The individual stories that shaped our history and defined our nation will evaporate. And when those stories go – we will all be affected. Because how can we know who we are, if we don’t know where we came from?

There are organizations trying desperately to preserve the personal accounts and to prevent these stories from dying. With the advent of new technologies, the American Veterans Centers allows contributors to submit online tributes and memories. The National WWII Museum and the Library of Congress are sponsoring additional efforts. The race is on.

But Ann Parr couldn’t wait.

As a writer, the Lindsborg, Kan., author recognized the importance of getting the story. Of documenting the narratives and protecting the history. So she started the Smoky Valley Writers Project and she asked our veterans to donate their stories and their photos and their memories.

And then she did something even more notable.

She enlisted the teenagers in her community to transcribe the accounts. She initiated a project to record our history and turned it into a teaching opportunity for a group of middle school children. And, before you knew it, she had persuaded a community full of Generation Y'ers to willingly (and enthusiastically) set aside their Xboxes and become authorities on all matters about World War II.

“I thought it was important for these kids to learn about the sacrifice this generation made,” Parr told me. “And it wasn’t just those who fought. Millions on the domestic front still have vivid memories of living with blackouts and rationing.”

The kids listened attentively to their elders. Then, taking after their remarkable role model, they wrote.

They wrote stories of regaining the Pacific in the Battle of Midway and of troops pouring into Stalingrad. They wrote stories of nursing soldiers back to health and working long hours in airplane factories. They wrote stories of planting Victory Gardens and, of course, they wrote emotional chronicles of June 6, 1944.

“You could see them come alive as they recounted their experiences,” Parr said. “And, as emotionally beneficial as it was for our veterans, it was even more valuable to these kids.”

The end result was an overpowering stack of hard-copy memoires that, without Ann Parr and her middle school posse, would have died buried far below the sands on the beaches of Normandy.

In his 1998 bestsellier, "The Greatest Generation," broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw argued that the veterans of WWII served not for fame and recognition, but because it was the right thing to do.